How central was Roger Ebert to the movies? Upon his dying of cancer today in his beloved Chicago at age 70, he drew Twitter condolences from Steve Martin, AlbertBrooks — even Humphrey Bogart.

Ebert, who died after publishing a detailed and moving longrunning commentary on his 11-year battle with thyroid cancer, had just the previous daymarked his 46th anniversary reviewing movies for The Chicago SunTimes, to which, in 1975, he brought home the first Pulitzer Prize ever awarded a film critic.

In his final blog post, he concluded with the words, “I’ll see you at the movies.”

It was his Laurel and Hardy act with the weedy, preppy Gene Siskel on TV for 23 years that made him perhaps the most famous critic in US history.

Even President Obama issued a statement: “Movies won’t be the same without Roger. Even amidst his own battles with cancer, Roger was as productive as he was resilient—continuing to share his passion and perspective with the world.”

From 1975 to 1998, fans tuned in hoping to see Siskel and Ebert lambaste each other’s movie picks. Their fraternal hostility was a model for today’s 24/7 news channel smackdowns.

Accidentally, though, the audience got plenty of smart, absorbing, film criticism that never suffered from the profession’s most contagious affliction: Esoteric a driven pretention. The proudest endorsement any movie ad could boast of was the legendary “Two Thumbs Up!—Siskel and Ebert.”

Ebert wrote in 2008, “I was instructed long ago by a wise editor, ‘If you understand something, you can explain it so that almost anyone can understand it. If you don’t, you won’t be able to understand your own explanation.’ That is why 90% of academic film theory is bulls–t. Jargon is the last refuge of the scoundrel.”

In later years, Ebert, who is survived by his trialattorney wife, Chaz Hammel Smith, was seen as a sort of Falstaffian figure who gorged on movies instead of wine.(He took his last drink in 1979). He said his personal philosophy was, “If, at the end, according to our abilities, we have done something to make others a little happier, and something to make ourselves a little happier, that is about the best we can do. To make others less happy is a crime.”

Such an outlook might work for a priest, but it would make for a lousy critic. Ebert was not a lousy critic. One of his collections of reviews was called (after a line in his review of “Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo”), “Your Movie Sucks.”

Though he wrote the exploitation film “Beyond the Valley of the Dolls,” of the 1969 skin flick “I Am Curious (Yellow),” he wrote, “not merely not erotic. It is antierotic. Two hours of this movie will drive thoughts of sex out of your mind for weeks. See the picture and buy twin beds.”

On 1996’s “Mad Dog Time”: “’The first movie I have seen that does not improve on the sight of a blank screen viewed for the same length of time . . . Watching ‘Mad Dog Time’ is like waiting for the bus in a city where you’re not sure they have a bus line . . . ‘Mad Dog Time’ should be cut into free ukulele picks for the poor.”

Tough, but fair, he earned Hollywood’s respect.

“Rest in Peace, Roger. You were simply the Best,” tweeted Richard Dreyfuss. Steve Martin (before Ebert’s passing) tweeted that “he was a part of my life for my whole career.” “One of the greats in his field,” wrote Albert Brooks.

Bogart’s estate (@HumphreyBogart) added condolences.

As cancer stole his lower jaw and his ability to speak or eat, Ebert wrote more than ever, his reflections on mortality blazing with life. Like a horrifically bad movie, illness drew some of his most inspired work. In a journal entry, he explained, “When I am writing, my problems become invisible and I am the same person I always was. All is well. I am as I should be.”